ST. ELMO - Gardening's been going downhill ever since that first major bit of unpleasantness involving Adam and Eve.

Fleeta Guffey says eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge enabled mankind to genetically engineer vegetables and crops to suit his corporate purposes. Over the long generations, however, the natural genetic variety of the food we grow has withered as ancient plant species have been uprooted in favor of what science has wrought.

But Fleeta, who lives out in the sticks near St. Elmo, is part of a peaceful guerrilla movement fighting to reclaim America's back yards. Their weapons are "heirloom plants" that have a history of being passed down through many gardening generations like Grandpa's gold watch. The freedom fighters' arsenal is the Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit organization dating to 1975 - although its roots go back much further - that lets gardeners swap heirloom seeds with each other in a regulated system for just a few bucks a transaction.

Seed Savers say they are saving food sources that taste a mile better than the bland produce we overpay for in stores, and with pest resistance developed over millennia, these naturally engineered plants are helping to safeguard our food supply.

It's a message that has been falling on fertile ground: The Seed Savers membership numbers more than 800 devotees growing all over the country and the world who list their offerings in the Seed Savers 2005 Yearbook. There are nearly 19,000 entries sprouting between its 432 pages, and they range from every vegetable you ever heard of to a cornucopia of fruit and even broom corn. Aside from seeds, members also swap potatoes, roots, cuttings and various other plant body parts.

"What we're doing is God's plan," says Fleeta, 79, who doesn't beat about any proverbial bushes when it comes to conceptualizing the Seed Saver struggle. "I love gardening and I love seeds, and it's God's plan to save the seeds from the plants he created. There already are a lot of seeds that have disappeared, but we're doing our best."

Fleeta's contributions to the yearbook for 2005 include cabbage, pink banana squash, cayenne peppers and pawpaw seeds. Sitting out in her idyllic backyard and watching them all grow, it's easy to dig the Seed Savers campaign. Orioles and finches the color of sunrise flash amid a burgeoning green riot of Guffey foliage in a garden where spring seems to have sprung earlier than everywhere else.

Fleeta's son Henry helps Mom with the plants along with his sister, Crystal.

"Store vegetables aren't real," says Henry, 50, like a judge intoning a death sentence. "The tomatoes taste like water, and then there's all those chemicals they put on to ship them. There really is nothing like just going out into the garden and picking your own food."

For more information, go to www.seedsavers.org or call (563) 382-5990.

Tony Reid can be reached at treid@;herald-review.com or 421-7977.